12 stories about the clocks going back
At 2am on Sunday 25 October 2026 the clocks go back one hour to 1am, British Summer Time ends and the UK returns to Greenwich Mean Time, according to GOV.UK. It gives you an extra hour in bed, and from that evening it gets dark an hour earlier. The story behind that one hour takes in a Bristol clock that still keeps two times, a builder on an early morning ride, a war in which the clocks ran two hours ahead, and a sunset that comes more than a week before the shortest day.
1. Every town once kept its own time
Until the middle of the 1800s, almost every town in Britain kept its own local time, set by the sun over that town, according to Royal Museums Greenwich, which puts Bristol about ten minutes behind Greenwich and Cardiff about thirteen.
2. A Bristol clock still keeps two times
You can still see that gap in Bristol. The clock on the front of the Corn Exchange in Corn Street has two minute hands, a red one for Greenwich time and a black one for Bristol’s own time, ten minutes behind it. Bristol only officially switched to Greenwich time in 1852, and the black hand still shows Bristol time today, as Secret Bristol explains.
3. The railways put the country on London time
Local time suited a town on its own, but it caused confusion once trains linked one town to the next and every station along a line could be keeping a different time, as Wikipedia notes. In November 1840 the Great Western Railway told all its stations to keep London time, which Wikipedia records as the first time that different local times were brought together under one standard time. The line’s 1841 timetable, quoted by the Science Museum, set out what that meant for its passengers:
“LONDON TIME is kept at all the Stations on the Railway, which is about 4 minutes earlier than READING time; 5½ minutes before STEVENTON time; 7½ minutes before CIRENCESTER time; 8 minutes before CHIPPENHAM time; 11 minutes before BATH and BRISTOL time; and 14 minutes before BRIDGEWATER time.”
4. Greenwich time only became law in 1880
The law was slow to catch up with the railways. By the mid-1850s almost all public clocks in Britain showed Greenwich Mean Time, yet it only became the country’s legal time in 1880, under the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act, according to Royal Museums Greenwich.
5. Summer time began on an early morning ride
The idea of moving the clocks for the summer came from William Willett, a builder who lived most of his life in Chislehurst, in Kent. He was riding his horse in nearby Petts Wood early one summer morning when he noticed how many blinds were still down, and the idea came to him, according to Wikipedia. In 1907 he published a pamphlet called The Waste of Daylight, and his plan was more complicated than ours: he wanted to put the clocks forward 80 minutes, in four separate moves of 20 minutes each, as Royal Museums Greenwich describes. From 1908 an MP, Robert Pearce, made several attempts to get it passed into law without success, and Willett died in 1915, a year before Britain finally changed its clocks.
6. Willett’s great-great-grandson is Chris Martin
Willett is remembered in Petts Wood, where a memorial sundial is set permanently to summer time and the Daylight Inn is named in his honour. He was also the great-great-grandfather of Chris Martin, the singer in Coldplay, as Wikipedia records, and Coldplay’s song Clocks won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 2004.
7. Germany changed its clocks first
Britain was not the first country to change its clocks. Germany and its wartime ally Austria-Hungary did it on 30 April 1916, to save coal during the First World War, according to Wikipedia. Britain followed three weeks later, and its clocks went forward for the first time on Sunday 21 May 1916.
8. It was never done for farmers
It is often said that the clocks change for the sake of farmers, but that is a myth. Farmers were never consulted, and dairy farmers have complained that the change upsets their cows, which are creatures of habit, as KentOnline reports.
9. In the war, the clocks went two hours ahead
During the Second World War, Britain’s clocks ran two hours ahead of Greenwich in the summer, under what was called British Double Summer Time, as Royal Museums Greenwich explains. It was used every summer from 1941 to 1945, and it came back for one more summer in 1947, according to Wikipedia.
10. Parliament has around 2,000 clocks to change
Twice a year, Parliament’s clock mechanics change around 2,000 clocks across the Parliamentary Estate, many of them in cases designed by Augustus Pugin. They walk about eight miles, take in six outbuildings and climb the 334 steps inside the Elizabeth Tower to switch off the dial lights, stop the mechanism and move the hands of the Great Clock of Big Ben, as UK Parliament describes.
11. From 25 October, the sun sets before 5pm until February
Once the clocks go back, it gets dark early. In London the sun sets at 4.47pm on Sunday 25 October, and then before 5pm every day until 6 February, according to the US Naval Observatory. The days are shorter still further north. On the shortest day, the observatory’s figures show the sun setting at 2.57pm in Lerwick, in Shetland, while Penzance, in Cornwall, gets over two hours more daylight than Lerwick.
12. The earliest sunset comes before the shortest day
You might expect the earliest sunset of the year to fall on the shortest day, but it comes more than a week before. The shortest day is Monday 21 December, when London gets 7 hours 49 minutes of daylight, according to Royal Museums Greenwich. Yet the US Naval Observatory’s figures put London’s earliest sunset at 3.51pm on 12 and 13 December, while on the shortest day itself the sun sets at 3.53pm. The mornings run the other way, and the latest sunrise, at 8.06am, comes around New Year.
The reason is that in December the sun runs slow compared with clock time, so sunrise and sunset come up to half a minute later by the clock from one day to the next. That is why sunsets start getting later before the shortest day, while sunrises keep getting later after it, as the US Naval Observatory explains.
What the darker months mean for your reading
William Willett worried about summer daylight going to waste. From now until February there is far less of it, and once the clocks go back, reading in the evening means reading by lamplight. By the middle of December the sun has set before four o’clock in London, which leaves more than six hours of lamplight before ten o’clock, so the light you read by makes a real difference.
Lights are scored for colour accuracy on a scale where only a light with the same spectrum as daylight scores 100, and typical white LED bulbs score around 80, according to Wikipedia. The HD Original scores 98 out of 100 for daylight accuracy, and it puts up to 12x more light on your page than a 60W bulb, between 3,600 and 7,200 lux at 50cm depending on how you shape its beam, so small print looks sharp and colours look true however early it gets dark.
See the HD Original Floor Light
The clocks going back: your questions answered
When do the clocks go back in 2026?
At 2am on Sunday 25 October 2026 the clocks go back one hour, to 1am. In the UK they always go back at 2am on the last Sunday in October, according to GOV.UK.
Do you gain or lose an hour when the clocks go back?
You gain an hour, so the night of Saturday 24 October is an hour longer than usual.
When do the clocks go forward in 2027?
At 1am on Sunday 28 March 2027 the clocks go forward one hour, to 2am. They go back again at 2am on Sunday 31 October 2027, according to GOV.UK.
When is the shortest day in 2026?
Monday 21 December 2026. The solstice itself is at 8.50pm GMT that evening, according to Royal Museums Greenwich.
Will the clocks ever stop changing?
Not for now, as the government has said it has no plans to change the system. We looked at the arguments for and against in Will the clocks stop changing?